 
Innovative Health Literacy Centre Announced 
The Montreal General Hospital, McGill University Health Centre, in co-operation with The Centre for Literacy, chose International Literacy Day to announce the creation of an innovative centre at the hospital that will cater to the information needs of tradi-tionally hard-to-reach groups of patients. These include people with low literacy, with language or cultural barriers, and with learning difficulties, physical or cognitive. Requests for funding are being vetted in several sectors, and the two organizations expect to conduct a detailed needs assessment in the coming year. The proposed centre will offer information and support to patients and families through diverse media and non-tradi-tional approaches; it will also offer training and communica-tions support for health care professionals. The site will serve as a testing ground for ideas and strategies that can be fine-tuned and incorpo-rated into the Patient Information Centre pro-jected as part of the amalgamated McGill University Health Centre scheduled to open in 2004. International Literacy Day 1999 On International Literacy Day, celebrating its tenth year of existence, The Centre hon-oured Dennis Trudeau and CBC Newswatch Montreal. Dennis has been spokesperson since 1994 for the annual Golf Day for Literacy in Quebec. The Centre has been a co-recipient with Literacy Partners of Quebec of the proceeds of the last two tournaments; our portion par-tially funded the health and liter-acy initiatives in local hospitals in1998 and 1999. For the second year, on International Literacy Day, we organized a public display on health and literacy in the lobby of the Montreal General Hospital. Three large panels with graphs and data were com-plemented by information tables where passers-by could ask questions and pick up materials. 
This year we added two large blank canvases where people were invited to paint a literacy message or image. The murals were the brainchild of Open City Productions 2002, a community-based organization dedicated to bringing the arts to the street. They have been helping commu-nity groups create a Great Millennial Wall to celebrate Human Rights. At the hospital, people lined up. Young, old, walking, in wheelchairs, with canes, alone, with friends, with attendants, patients, visitors, nurses, doctors, kitchen staff — everyone wanted to leave a mark. People kept asking if we would be back the next day. The urge to signify presence runs deep. The literacy murals will become part of the Great Millennial Wall which will tour Canada in the Year 2000.
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